Crazy English!!

Last weekend 5 other teachers from SIAS and myself went to work at a Crazy English camp in Chongqing. Crazy English is fairly famous in China. The guy in the background that I am immatating is Li Yang, the founder of Crazy English. While his English speaking ability is great, I don't think his methods are very effective, especially considering the cost of the camp. They barely utilize the foreigners at the camp, which I think is a bad use of money and resources. They pay us a lot to be there, but our main job is to look foreign so kids will want to go. During most of the day we would sit in the big teaching sessions and listen to the Chinese teachers teach. Then every so often, they would ask us to pronounce a word or a sentence. Of course, hearing us say the word one time is hardly going to do anything for the kids. The only time we were actually doing anything was at night. Some nights they divided us up and we would go around to the students' classroom and talk in small groups with them, letting them ask us anything they wanted. Other nights we were actually supposed to create some sort of lesson for them. Another thing that was painful about the camp was listening to the chants that they would teach the kids to say. Some of them, in fact, most of them were filled with complete garbage about how amazing they are and how they need to believe in themselves. But I did meet some cool kids there, so I was glad for that.